We live in an age obsessed with speed. We stream movies at 2x speed. We microwave meals in 90 seconds. We judge our internet not by its reliability, but by its latency . And yet, we are psychologically unmoored by how fast physical things die.
We build anyway. We write the poem anyway. We record the lullaby anyway. We light the candle in the rose window’s glow, even as we hear the ticking.
On a cool Tuesday morning in October, the spire of St. Martin’s Cathedral had stood for 847 years. It had witnessed plagues, survived two world wars, and been the backdrop for a thousand harvest festivals. By 9:47 AM, it was dust. destroyed in seconds
In 2021, a small museum in Ohio lost its entire oral history archive when a cloud provider terminated a dormant account. Forty years of work. Voices of veterans. Stories of steelworkers. Destroyed in seconds. Not by a bomb, but by an automated script.
For 2.4 seconds, the Gothic masterpiece held its breath. Then, it folded into itself. We live in an age obsessed with speed
By J. Cartwright
Today, we face a new kind of instant destruction: the digital erasure. We judge our internet not by its reliability,
Because the fact that it can be destroyed in seconds does not diminish its value. It defines it.